What we want in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus

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Apple’s event on September 9th is fast approaching, and we’ve already covered some of the rumors around what Cupertino could reveal this time around. I’ve owned an Apple iPhone 6 Plus since its debut last October, and while I like the phone, there are plenty of things it needs that aren’t necessarily circulating in the blogosphere.

What we’re actually expecting from the event is pretty well known by now: upgraded cameras once again, including possibly to 12 megapixels and 4K recording on the back, and another bump in quality for the front-facing sensor; a Force Touch display similar to what’s on the Apple Watch; a stronger 7000-series aluminum alloy that could alleviate fears of accidentally bending the phone; and a new A9 SoC with an improved CPU, GPU, and motion sensor chip.

So with that — and granted, those are all going to be welcome improvements if they prove true — here’s what I’d really like to see Apple bring to the table:

Better RF reception. This has been a perennial issue with iPhones since the first generation model, but it’s particularly acute if you do what I did and switch from one of the larger carriers to T-Mobile. T-Mobile can achieve some very fast LTE speeds, but its coverage is centered on major metropolitan areas in the US. And as I’ve found to my chagrin when heading out to my apartment in Queens, the combination of the iPhone 6 Plus’s weak RF performance and T-Mobile’s less-than-stellar network coverage shows up the moment you pop out of the underground tunnel on the subway from Manhattan to Queens. Some days I have no signal at all for the first four above-ground subway stops, even if I switch into Airplane mode and back out again. It’s just dead, one mile out of Manhattan: “No Signal.” This never happened on AT&T or Verizon, but it does on T-Mobile, and in my experience, only with iPhones. Several of us at various Ziff Davis sites have confirmed Samsung Galaxy phones have much stronger data reception, and loaner Android phones I’ve taken out this way never drop completely.

An AMOLED display. Hear me out, because I know this is heresy in some circles. Early AMOLED displays on Samsung phones had exaggerated color and poor performance in sunlight. The latest models are drop-dead gorgeous. If the next iPhone had an AMOLED display similar in quality to the stunning panel on the Galaxy Note 5, my credit card would be out before my brain processed the fact that I reached for my wallet. I know this one isn’t going to happen, but seriously, take a look at the latest Samsung phones if you want to see an amazing display for watching movies or playing games.

More base memory storage. 16GB in today’s environment makes the phone almost impossible to use. Put aside media storage for music, videos, backing up in the cloud, switching to streaming services, and all that baloney. All you have to do is install a few AAA-style games and record some videos of your newborn with the built-in camera, and you’ll bump into that 16GB ceiling in the first week. Sure, you can buy the 64GB or 128GB model if you want more storage, but 32GB should be the absolute minimum. I’ve got a 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, but I had 16GB the last time around, and I still run into people constantly with storage issues.

Improved low-light video performance. This could be a software thing instead of hardware — heck, if we really dive into iOS issues, I’ve got a tremendous list, starting with Apple’s terrible Photos and new Music apps — but I fear this one is in hardware, and difficult to crack. All I know is that whenever I switch the iPhone’s excellent camera from photo to video mode, the available light gathering drops tremendously, to the point where every single indoor video I’ve taken recently looks like the lights were out. Maybe it is a software tweak.

A smarter battery. Everyone wants more battery life from their phones, myself included. But how come sometimes I can pull out the phone only to realize that the camera has been on, or Waze has been running in the background with GPS when I didn’t realize it, or a rogue app has been sitting in memory running constant background refreshes for no reason? You can tell the phone was working for no reason because it’s hot. Power management is one of today’s most important topics in chip and software design, and improvements can’t come soon enough. But a little more ingenuity from the phone itself would also be great.

More stability with iOS 9. One other software thing I will mention is the OS kernel itself. Even with iOS 8.4.1, my phone locks up on occasion, the browser stops working, the camera hangs with a blank pic showing, the one-finger-scroll-up maneuver to activate the camera on the lock screen stops working and only raises the bar a quarter of an inch no matter what I do; and the list goes on. The base OS should be rock solid. It used to be this way, but it hasn’t for me for the past couple of years now, and it’s gotten old.

I’ve been a “switcher” for the past 30 years — ever since I grew up, I’ve been switching back and forth between PCs and Macs, Sega Genesis and SNES, PlayStations and Xboxes, and as of late, all around the merry-go-round of mobile OSes, including iOS and Android several times. It keeps my mind fresh and full of day-to-day experience with each platform, in addition to all the loaners I test as part of my job. My next personal phone may well be an Android phone again. But based on almost a year’s worth of experience with the iPhone 6 Plus, if I were getting the next model, the above is what I would want most.

What about you? What do you want to see in the next iPhone? Let us know in the comments below.

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